


The Worth of Scorn

by celeste9



Category: The Two Faces of January (2014)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arguing, Biting, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, Melancholy, Multi, Power Play, Rough Sex, Threesome - F/M/M, Yuleporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:06:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8886793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: “Fuck you, Chester,” Rydal said, a flush of anger in his cheeks. Anger only, nothing else, he told himself. He pushed his chair back. “The truth is you don’t want me to leave because if I did, you’d both have to go back to fucking nobody but each other.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/gifts).



> This is a bit of an amalgamation of a few of your prompts. I enjoyed having the chance to play in this universe with these fascinating characters so I hope you enjoy the result! The title is from 'The Old Astronomer to His Pupil' by Sarah Williams.

It was as easy in Italy as it had been in Greece. Rydal almost felt bad short-changing the nice old Midwestern couple as they bought a ceramic bowl, but he figured they could stand to lose the money.

It was almost like charity, really. They just didn’t know they were doing it.

Rydal smiled at them and wished them good fortune on the rest of their vacation as he caught Colette’s eye. She was standing across the market, hair curling, expensive dress, the corners of her mouth twisting as she watched him.

When Rydal crossed the street to meet her, she said, “You don’t have to do this, you know. It’s not like we need the money.”

“Not yet,” Rydal said, because surely Colette had to know Chester’s money wouldn’t last forever, not while they were constantly on the run.

The real reason, though, was something he couldn’t say.

_I need something that’s mine._

Colette only looked amused. “You don’t like being a kept man, do you?”

“Not something I’ve had any experience with. I’m not sure it’s even true now.”

“If Chester didn’t want you around, believe me, he would have done something about it.”

“Drag me into somewhere dark and secluded so he could knock me over the head and leave me again, you mean?”

“He won’t do that,” Colette said, fierce and certain. “If I’d known he wouldn’t have even done it the first time.”

Rydal wondered what Colette thought she could do to stop him but supposed it didn’t matter. He thought of Chester’s fingers around his wrist, Chester shoving against him, and wondered if even he would stop him.

“We want you around,” Colette said, moving towards him, her fingertips on his cheek. The scent of her perfume hovered in the air.

“You do, huh?”

Colette caught her lip between her teeth. She nodded her head towards the alley behind them.

She didn’t quite ask but Rydal knew what she was asking all the same. He kept a rubber in his wallet.

Rydal fucked her against the wall, her leg hooked around his hip, her fingers squeezing into the flesh of his ass. She gasped so prettily against his cheek when she came, eyelashes fluttering. He felt this ridiculous desire to stay there, sheathed inside her, warm and sated, but Colette pushed gently at his shoulders and lowered herself back to the ground, straightening her clothes.

“Chester will wonder where we are,” she said.

“Chester knows what we’re doing,” Rydal said, and Colette didn’t argue.

They walked back to the hotel together, under the bright sun. Rydal let his arm brush against Colette’s every now and then, knowing that to anyone watching them they must look like a handsome, happy couple on holiday. Rydal enjoyed the fantasy.

The hotel wasn’t as nice as the ones Chester and Colette used to stay in, as the one in Athens before their past had caught up to them. Truthfully it wasn’t even fair to call it a hotel.

But the beds were clean and no one asked questions.

Rydal and Colette parted in the hall, she to the room she shared with Chester and he to the room he shared with no one but himself. Rydal wondered what Chester was doing, wondered if he would be able to smell Rydal on his wife.

The sun was setting when the knock came. Rydal’s small desk was next to the window and he could see the colors reflect across the sky as he sat with his journal, smoking.

He crushed his cigarette in the ash tray and said, “Yeah?”

He knew it was Chester when the door simply opened. Colette always waited for him.

Chester’s linen suit coat was open, no tie, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. Rydal leaned back in his chair, spread his legs.

“You didn’t want to eat?” Chester asked.

“Wanted some time alone.”

“Colette thought we should get you. I told her you don’t need a nanny.”

“How thoughtful.”

“Heard you went for a walk this afternoon. Met Colette in the market.”

_Did more than that,_ Rydal thought, but the edge in Chester’s tone told him he didn’t need to say it for Chester to know. “It’s a beautiful country. You should enjoy it, take out your beautiful wife to see the scenery.”

Chester came farther into the room. “And my wife’s beautiful boyfriend? What should I do with him?”

Rydal stood and went around his desk to stand by the open window, leaning. “I thought I was your beautiful boyfriend. You’ve certainly fucked me often enough.” He paused purposefully. “Oh, that’s right, I’m less a boyfriend and more a convenient hole.”

If Rydal had thought that might get a rise out of Chester, he’d been mistaken. Chester only moved closer still, looming, gaze intent. “You don’t seem to be complaining when you’re moaning my name.”

Taking advantage of their sudden proximity, Rydal pushed against the front of Chester’s shoulder. “I don’t think you’d care if I did complain. Don’t think you’d care if I said no.”

Chester caught his wrist and turned him roughly around until Rydal was pressed to the wall where the window was, his upper body leaning out the window. He felt a breeze on his cheeks and looked down to the street below. A family was out walking, two small children, and Rydal shuddered at the drag of Chester’s hand down his spine.

“You aren’t going to say no, are you, Rydal?” Chester’s voice was a low murmur near Rydal’s ear; he opened Rydal’s fly with one hand and bit at the skin behind his ear until he hissed.

“No,” Rydal said, “no, I…” He gripped the window ledge and watched the family walking, watched the people in the street as Chester pushed into him roughly.

He bit his lip to cover up a moan, wondering what the strangers below would think if they looked up, if they looked up and saw him; would they know he was getting fucked? Would they be able to tell that he _loved_ it, the too-hard press that bordered on pain, the knowledge that Colette was across the hall, maybe thinking about him, maybe thinking about Chester, maybe thinking about them both.

Rydal tried to curl his fingers around his cock but Chester smacked his hand.

“No,” he said, a growl that seemed to go straight to Rydal’s cock. “I didn’t say you could do that.”

Whimpering, Rydal clutched the ledge again. Chester’s fingers were digging into his waist, leaving bruises to go along with all the rest, in various fading shades. The breeze felt cool on Rydal’s overheated skin and in the erratic thrusting of Chester’s hips, Rydal could sense he was getting close.

“Do you think about me when you fuck my wife?” Chester murmured, low, then thrust once, twice, swearing into Rydal’s hair as he shuddered.

Rydal staggered with the force of Chester’s weight leaning into him but he was so careful, so good; he didn’t touch himself, even though his fingers were twitching to, even though his cock was aching for want of it.

Chester noticed, Rydal knew he did, and finally as his cock softened against Rydal’s cheeks, Chester reached around to touch him.

“Such a good boy,” Chester said, tone mocking, and Rydal came with only the loosest grip around his cock.

As he leaned against the window frame, gasping, Rydal might have been embarrassed if he did that sort of thing. As it was, he just pulled his pants back up, turning to watch Chester as he zipped up his fly.

Chester smoothed his hair back, only the faint sheen of sweat at his temples and the way his clothes weren’t quite as neat as they had been indicating that he had been doing anything but talking. A smirk touched his mouth.

Rydal waited for him to say something but he didn’t. Maybe he thought he didn’t need to; what they’d done and Rydal’s reaction to it was enough.

“Back to your wife now?” Rydal said.

“Well, I know she won’t be warming your bed,” Chester said. His eyes flickered down Rydal’s body and then back up. _No one will be,_ he didn’t need to say.

And they both knew Rydal wasn’t going to do anything about it.

-

“Writing about me?” Colette asked as she slid onto the bench beside Rydal.

It was warm and sunny and Rydal’s journal lay open on his lap. He hadn’t actually been writing but he’d been lost in his own head enough that Colette’s appearance had surprised him.

He smiled at her. “You are my muse, of course,” he said, deliberately ostentatious in his flattery because he knew Colette would find it amusing more than precisely true. Even if it was. Sort of pathetically true, really. Rydal hadn’t written anything in months that wasn’t in some way inspired by Colette and Chester.

She pressed her fingertips against his shoulder, laughing. “I suppose I shouldn’t ask if they’re happy or sad poems, then.”

“Complicated poems,” Rydal said, and Colette sucked her lip between her teeth for an instant.

“Will you ever show them to me?”

“I usually keep them to myself. When I’m not sending them out to be rejected, anyway.”

“You showed your poems to your girlfriend in Greece.”

“She wasn’t my girlfriend.”

“No? What was she, then? Your mark? A distraction?”

“She was a placeholder until I met you.”

Colette smiled but there was knowingness in her eyes. She was never as fooled by Rydal’s shit as the girls before her had been. “If you can show your poems to her, why can’t you show them to me?”

“She only got to see the ones I wanted her to see.”

“There aren’t any you want me to see? Don’t you trust me, Rydal?”

_I don’t trust anyone,_ Rydal thought but didn’t say.

“I think you won’t show them to me because you’re afraid. You’ve put yourself into those poems and you’re afraid to let me see.”

“Seems you know me better than I know myself,” Rydal said, eyes on the pedestrians in the street before them.

“One day,” Colette said, her hand on Rydal’s knee. “One day you’ll believe that we actually want you.”

“I know you want me,” Rydal said, dragging his fingertips along the underside of Colette’s wrist.

She stopped him. “Not like that.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Not _only_ like that,” Colette amended. “More than that.”

Rydal shrugged. “If you say so.”

“And one day,” Colette said, her nails digging into the flesh of Rydal’s thigh, “one day you’ll admit that it’s more than that for you, too.”

-

They had dinner in a café outside, the three of them, sharing good red wine. Rydal sometimes wondered what they looked like, on the outside. A pair of grown-up children treating their father to a nice dinner? A husband and wife, and the husband’s father? A man and his too young wife, and the friend she fancied? He wondered if anyone ever dared to think something more risqué, something closer to the truth.

“I’m tiring of Italy,” Chester said, too many glasses of wine in. “Where should we go next? Anyone have an opinion? How many more languages did your father teach you, Rydal?”

It was always a jab. Rydal knew Chester thought that everything Rydal had told them about his past had been bullshit.

Only part of it had been bullshit. “I know enough to get by.”

Chester chuckled, a mean undercurrent to it. “You get by, all right. I wonder why you don’t show any inclination to get by on your own anymore.”

“Chester,” Colette said, scowling, but Chester lifted his hand.

“Let the kid fight his own battles. You can defend yourself, can’t you, Rydal?”

“Been doing it my whole life.”

“There, see?” Chester leaned back in his chair. “Kid’s got a spine.”

“A spine?” Rydal couldn’t help it; he knew Chester was goading him but he couldn’t stop himself. “I’ve got a lot more than that. I hope you appreciate this fine meal, this beautiful café, because if I hadn’t helped you you’d be sitting in a jail cell right now, rotting.”

“And you’d be in the cell next to mine. Pretty boy like you, I’m sure you would’ve had a lot of admirers.”

Colette made a disgusted sound.

“Think I would have done better than you,” Rydal countered. “You in your fancy suits and your fancy hotels, your fancy parties. Real life’s not like that. I’d know.”

Chester snorted, amused and derisive. “Oh, right. Silver spoon Rydal who went to Greece to _find_ himself by committing petty crimes on girls richer than he is and fucking them after. What a life you’ve lived.”

Rydal looked to Colette, her lips pursed and her cheeks in a high flush, her fingers gripping the stem of her glass. He wouldn’t be surprised if in a minute she flung her wine in her husband’s face.

And maybe Rydal’s face, too. Half and half.

“More of a life than you,” Rydal said. “I got you out of the country; without me you wouldn’t have even made it out of Athens.”

“And you did it purely out of the goodness of your heart, huh? No thought of a payday?”

Rydal said nothing.

“It wasn’t just the money, though.” Chester glanced to Colette. “You were right there, darling. He was hoping for a little… gratitude, I think, my beautiful wife slipping into his bed. Maybe me, too, but I doubt he even realized he wanted that.”

“Fuck you, Chester,” Rydal said, a flush of anger in his cheeks. Anger only, nothing else, he told himself. He pushed his chair back. “The truth is you don’t want me to leave because if I did, you’d both have to go back to fucking nobody but each other.”

As Rydal strode away from the table, he heard Colette make a frustrated scoffing sound in her throat and then a splash of liquid.

“Rydal,” she said, and when Rydal turned to look he saw her standing there while Chester wiped at his face with a napkin, Colette’s empty glass upturned on the table.

“I just want to take a walk,” Rydal said, waving her off.

She let him go.

-

Rydal was having a coffee in the piazza the next morning when Chester found him, red-eyed but impeccably dressed.

“You can get an espresso in there,” Rydal said, pointing. “You look like you could use one.”

“Not your best work,” Chester said. “But I guess your parting shot last night makes up for it.”

“You really want to talk about this?”

“No, actually. But I thought you might like to know Colette hasn’t spoken to me since.”

“Pretty sure that’s your fault, not mine.”

“I know whose fault it is.” Chester lit up a cigarette, then offered one to Rydal. “I don’t understand you, Rydal. You’re a clever kid and maybe you didn’t actually go to Yale, maybe you did, who the hell knows? But you’re smart. Well-read. Charming. All that good fortune and what did you do with it? Used your pretty words to fleece money from college girls.”

“Not all of them were college girls.”

Chester’s laugh was dry. “So what made Colette so special, huh? What made her different from all the beautiful girls you fucked for money like a two-bit whore?”

Rydal blew a ring of smoke into Chester’s face. “You really need me to tell you that?”

“I guess what I’m really wondering is, was it her or me? I was the one you were staring at outside the Parthenon, and again at the café. But it was her you wanted to fuck while you sat next to your sweet, dumb girlfriend that night at dinner.”

“Maybe I wanted to fuck both of you.”

Chester laughed again, wry, amused. “Why did you come back? To the hotel?”

Rydal shrugged, took another drag of his cigarette. “You know why. Colette forgot her bracelet.”

“You could have given it to your girl. Hell, you could’ve sold it. Passed it off as something valuable. Seems easily within your skillset.”

“Maybe it was fate.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Chester said, but he was clearly still more amused than anything. “Is anything you ever say true?”

Rydal looked away, to the strangers with their coffees and breakfast pastries. “Sometimes.”

He was almost startled when he felt Chester’s hand on his shoulder. “I doubt you even know anymore when you’re being truthful and when you aren’t,” he said, and walked back in the direction of the hotel.

-

Chester was full of shit, Rydal thought. Like he knew anything. Rydal might know how to run a low-scale con but he definitely knew when he was doing it. He didn’t con _himself._

He had conned the MacFarlands. They’d made an easy target. That wasn’t why he had gone back to the hotel with Colette’s bracelet but it had proven too good an opportunity to pass up. (And, yeah, okay, maybe he would have decided differently if he’d known the guy was _dead,_ but it was too late for that now.) Their life, money and nice hotels and expensive clothes, that had been… seductive. Maybe Rydal had wanted to experience it, even if only for a moment. Colette had been beautiful and Chester had been intriguing.

But Chester made it seem like…

It didn’t matter. Chester didn’t know what he was talking about.

And now Colette was in Rydal’s bed, naked, nothing covering her pale, creamy skin but a thin sheet pulled up to her waist.

Chester had been in a mood and he’d gone off to have a drink. Colette and Rydal both knew he’d be gone half the night at least, maybe all night.

It felt strange to lie with Colette in bed, like a lazy, sated couple. She was curled against his chest while Rydal had a smoke and he almost didn’t know what to do. Post-coital _anything_ wasn’t something he and Colette made a habit of.

Whatever jealous rage Chester had been possessed of in Greece had faded as the months passed, as Rydal settled into their lives. That said, his relationship with Colette, whatever it was, would never be precisely normal, would never be the stuff of grand romances.

They fucked. That was pretty much it.

And then sometimes he got fucked by her husband, too. As far as romances went, it was a pretty sleazy one.

“You could leave, you know,” Colette said. “If you wanted. Chester can’t turn you in without turning in himself.”

The reverse was true, as well. It was the only reason Chester would ever let him go – Rydal couldn’t say anything without knowing that Chester would name him an accomplice.

The couple in the hotel in Athens had seen Rydal’s face.

“Do you want me to leave?” Rydal asked.

Colette reached for Rydal’s cigarette and he let her have it. She breathed out a plume of smoke. “You know I don’t.”

“You need me to translate for you.”

“No. Well, yes, but I-- _we_ \-- need you because we like you, Rydal.”

Rydal took his cigarette back. He didn’t say anything.

Colette laughed softly, squeezing Rydal’s chest. “I don’t understand you. You’re confident enough to run your schemes but you won’t believe that anyone cares about you.”

“Sad little boy, never loved,” Rydal said wryly. “Doesn’t believe he ever will be.”

“You could be serious once in a while.”

The best part was that Rydal had been being serious. Sort of. A little. “Normally when I’m serious it ends with Chester and me in a fight.”

“Maybe that’s something you could both work on.”

“I’m not sure my relationship with Chester functions without a bit of rage.”

“Is that how you fuck?” Colette asked, pushing herself off Rydal and leaning on an elbow, seeming genuinely curious. “Angry?”

Rydal took another drag of his cigarette and tossed the end in the ash tray on the stand by the bed. He had wondered, sometimes, if Colette knew what he did with her husband. When he’d given it up that night at dinner, though, she hadn’t seemed surprised, and she clearly wasn’t surprised now.

He supposed Colette had always been smarter than anyone gave her credit for.

“I guess,” he said. “Chester’s usually angry at me.”

“And you like it?”

Rydal thought this was probably another of those times he should be embarrassed, if only he were capable. “Doesn’t really matter what I like.”

Colette sucked her lip between her teeth. “But you… He pleases you?”

Rydal couldn’t help his sharp laugh. “You mean, do I orgasm? Yeah, when he wants me to.”

“That’s what you want?”

_I want him to be rough and I want him to_ want _me, I want him to be happy with me, I want to earn it,_ Rydal thought and then drew his eyebrows together, a bit horrified at himself. What?

_Such a good boy,_ Rydal heard in his head, in Chester’s voice, and felt a traitorous flush overtake him.

“It is,” Colette said slowly, watching him. “You _like_ that he’s a little bit mean to you.”

“If you want me to be ashamed, I’m not.”

Colette lightly dragged her long nails down Rydal’s chest. “That’s not what I want, Rydal. That’s not what I want at all.”

Rydal pushed her back and straddled her hips, catching her lips in a kiss and then sliding his mouth down her jaw and to her neck, sucking wetly. “But you want this?” he said, biting gently, feeling Colette squeeze his waist.

She gasped faintly, hips rocking faintly upwards, and let Rydal distract her.

-

Rydal knew it was a bad idea but frankly, that was most of the appeal.

The bed smelled faintly of Chester, he felt. Chester and Colette, the mingled scents of their sweat, of Colette’s perfume and Chester’s aftershave, their shampoo and their soap. He mouthed at Colette’s breast, slipping his finger inside her, and listened to her mewl beneath him as he made love to her in the bed she shared with her husband.

It was a terrible idea.

Rydal was unbelievably aroused, his cock leaking before Colette had even touched him.

“He does seem very generous, Colette, just like you said.”

“Shit!” Rydal rolled off Colette so fast he nearly went over the side of the bed, catching himself just in time.

Colette seemed supremely unbothered by the sudden entrance of her husband, though it had been her suggestion they do it here while Chester was away in the first place. She didn’t even bother to cover herself; she simply sat up on the bed, her back cushioned by the pillows.

Rydal stared across the room at Chester, wondering if he would have the opportunity to grab his clothes. Facing Chester undressed seemed horribly unfair.

Knowing that Rydal was fucking Colette was one thing. Having it thrown in his face was entirely something else. Rydal waited for Chester’s possessive rage, for the feel of a fist in his face.

Instead Chester was taking off his shoes and sitting on the bed beside Colette. She curled into him.

“I’m, uh, I’m gonna go back to my room,” Rydal said, hating the uncertain waver in his voice. He didn’t like feeling thrown off-guard and no one could do that to him like these two.

“But we haven’t finished,” Colette said. She dropped her hand between her legs, fingers dangling there.

Rydal gaped at her.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Chester added.

Looking between the two of them, Rydal started to realize that he may have been played. He remembered that this had been Colette’s idea.

She hadn’t meant for him to fuck her in the bed she shared with her husband while Chester was out. She had meant for him to fuck her in the bed she shared with her husband so that Chester would find them.

Because Chester had known they would be here.

Rydal stood up, flushed and furious, grabbing his clothes. “You know, it’s great that I’m so amusing to you, I’m glad this is such a fucking fun _game_ but I don’t have to--”

“Rydal,” Colette said, and she was kneeling on the side of the bed, next to Rydal while he fumbled with his shirt. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and brought his hand over to her chest, setting it onto her skin. “Rydal, please.”

Rydal stared at his hand, his skin a golden tan against Colette’s paleness. Colette pushed up against him, her arms around his shoulders, her perfume a heady scent enveloping him, and then she was lying back, pulling Rydal down.

He went. God knew why but he went, knees bracketing Colette’s thighs, while Chester watched. He supported his weight on his elbows while Colette gazed up at him, pink lips and cool blue eyes.

“I thought you liked games,” she said.

“Only when I know the rules,” Rydal murmured. _When I make the rules._

“These are the rules,” Chester said, and the sound of his voice, so suddenly near to Rydal’s ear, so low, made Rydal shiver. “Show me how you please my wife and if it pleases me, maybe we’ll please you.”

“Fuck, oh, fuck,” Rydal said, and his cock, soft between his legs since the interruption, gave a very interested twitch.

Chester stroked one long finger down Rydal’s spine. Colette slipped one hand into Rydal’s hair and tugged.

Rydal leaned down and kissed Colette as deep and filthy as he could, hearing her whine in her throat, feeling the scrape of Chester’s nails on his skin. He lavished attention on Colette, sucking her nipple between his lips, working his fingers at her sex until she was wet and gasping. He kissed and licked his way down her chest, dragging his teeth lightly over her flat stomach, and then looked up at her, her eyes only half open as she watched him, her lips parted.

Her fingers scratched at his shoulders.

Rydal bent his head, licked at her with the flat of his tongue.

Colette moaned.

Chester’s fingers moved roughly in Rydal’s hair, against his scalp. He was pressed close to Rydal’s back, the material of his shirt soft on Rydal’s skin, the bulge of his cock somehow a familiar yet unfamiliar sensation.

He pressed his lips to the back of Rydal’s neck and bit down. Rydal whimpered against Colette and didn’t stop, gently sucking the way he knew she liked. He stroked his hands over the smooth, sensitive skin of her thighs.

“That’s good,” Chester said. “You’re going to be good, aren’t you, Rydal?”

“Yes,” Rydal said, the taste of Colette on his tongue and the feel of Chester at his back. “Yes.”

The real reason Rydal would never leave was because he didn’t want to.

**_End_ **


End file.
